Noindex on the homepage or a menu page

Why it matters

A homepage or a main menu page that is kept out of Google costs the site its most important traffic. It is a silent mistake: the site works for visitors, nothing looks broken, and the rankings disappear over the following weeks.

How Snaglist checks it

Snaglist checks the robots meta tag and the X-Robots-Tag header of every page. A page with noindex is reported here when it is the homepage (also of a language) or when it is linked from the header or navigation of at least half the pages. Login, account, cart and search pages are expected to have noindex and are listed under the informational check instead.

Snaglist reports this as an error. In the health score an error costs the whole page, so fix it first.

Common causes

• The WordPress setting 'discourage search engines from indexing this site' left on after a migration
• A staging or development setting that went live
• A template that sets noindex on every page
• An SEO plugin set to noindex on the page itself

How to fix it

1. In WordPress, open Settings, Reading, and untick 'discourage search engines'.
2. Check the SEO settings of the page itself for a noindex setting.
3. Load the page and confirm that the robots meta tag no longer says noindex.
4. Ask Google to inspect the page in Search Console, so it comes back quickly.

How it shows in the report

In the report for your client this appears under the heading "Your most important pages are kept out of Google". When everything is in order, the report says: "The homepage and the menu pages are open to Google".